


Something in the Tank

by Sinistretoile



Series: Hallowe'en [17]
Category: Snowpiercer (2013)
Genre: 31 Days Of Halloween, Blood, F/M, Halloween, Halloween Challenge, Implied Sexual Content, Mermaids, Mild Blood, Minor Violence, Sirens, mermaid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 11:37:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16474832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinistretoile/pseuds/Sinistretoile
Summary: Aboard Snowpiercer, something is killing the apex predators in the ocean car. As luck would have it, Curtis is a fair swimmer…





	Something in the Tank

**Author's Note:**

> Day 5 of 31. Prompt: Siren

Snowpiercer rattled over the tracks at an alarming rate of speed, keeping ahead of the subzero temperatures outside its metal shell. Curtis crouched in the huddle of tail passengers doing their best to keep themselves warm. He glanced at the guards manning the door then frowned.  
“Do the guards seem spooked?”  
Edgar looked around his shoulder, watching the guards move back and forth. They seemed more skittish than ever. “Yea, yeah they do.”  
“Good, so it’s not just me.” Before their conversation could continue, Mason entered through the sliding door. “Something’s going on.”  
“I need an agile man. A strong swimmer.”  
Edgar nudged Curtis’s side. “What’s swimming?” The oldest of the pair sighed before Curtis raised his hand.  
“You there, are you a swimmer?”  
“Mason, some of these people don’t know what swimming is.”  
She smacked her lips, sucking air through her teeth. “That. Does not. Answer my question.” She looked past him, moving her head in a bird-like manner. “Anyone?”  
Curtis raised his hand again, prompting her to sigh. “I know how to swim.”  
“That is acceptable.” She gave him her back to show that she didn’t see him as a threat then led him from the tail section. “We’ve a situation in the ocean.”  
“The-the ocean?”  
“Yes.” There was that bird-like motion again. “It seems we have a rather proliferative species that is killing the apex predators and leaving their half-eaten corpses for the attendants.”  
Curtis was busy discreetly checking out security as they walked and missed what she’d said. “Excuse me?”  
Mason sighed. “We have a predator eating other predators in the ocean car.”  
Curtis pulled up short outside a door that reminded him of a hatch on a ship or submarine. “And you want me to do what exactly?”  
“Find it. Kill it.” She handed him a sharpened knife. He could have easily stabbed her, right between the ribs or in the jugular. “You might want to strip.” She gestured to the many, many layers of clothes he wore. He sighed and set the knife on a ledge as he began to remove his clothes until he stood only in a pair of boxers.  
“How will you know if I’ve killed the thing?”  
“You’ll either return or you won’t.” The hatch opened and the guards shoved him inside. He had a moment to snag the knife before they closed him up. He could see brilliant colors under the water. His moment of awe was choked by a sob.  
Curtis had spent almost half his life on this fucking train. He expected to never see the ocean, or water for that matter, again. The metal grate bit into his bare feet but he didn’t care. The cool, moist air of the car was warmer than he’d felt in too long to remember.  
The air in the car smelt salty, fishy, and briny. He could taste it on the back of his tongue. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. There was something else. Iron and copper. He knew that scent, that taste all too well. Blood. And lots of it. He moved forward cautiously.  
“Hello?” His voice carried along the metal roof above the water. He heard a soft splash somewhere up ahead. “Mason sent me.” Again, no answer. Surely, there were attendants. Of course, there were. Mason said they were finding the carcasses. “Hello? Anyone here?”  
“Over here.” The voice was soft, feminine and alluring. He paused.  
“Are you alright? Where is everyone?”  
“I’m alone.” His calloused feet thumped against the metal as he moved forward, quickly by cautiously.  
“Are you hurt?”  
“No…” The trailing lilt in her voice gave him pause again.  
“Where are you? What’s your name?”  
“I’m over here.” He stopped and turned around. Her voice seemed to be coming from everywhere with the echo against the roof.  
“I don’t see you.”  
“Keep coming forward.” He saw them then, bodies tossed onto the walkway. He adjusted his grip on the knife in his hand. The walkway swayed and Curtis grabbed onto the railing to keep from being tossed into the water.  
The light above him flickered. “What happened here?”  
“They tried to hurt me.” Curtis couldn’t believe his eyes. A mermaid?! A fucking mermaid on this god-forsaken train! He forgot about safety and rubbed his eyes, his face with both hands.  
“You’re…you’re a mermaid.”  
She tilted her head. “I do not know what that is.” Her tail flipped in the water. “What is that?”  
“Well, you. Half girl and half fish.” He gestured toward her tail. “Wow…” He stared at her in open wonder and awe. “You killed them.”  
She shrugged. “They tried to kill me. Was I supposed to let them?” She had a point. Her oddly pretty face scrunched up at the sight of the knife in his hand. “Are you going to hurt me?”  
“That depends.”  
“On?”  
“Are you going to hurt me?”  
She smiled and it was a mouth full of teeth. “Only if you make me.” Curtis stooped to sit on the broken walkway. Her tail fin flipped in the water, her head tilting to the side as she watched him.  
“Why are you killing everything?”  
“Not everything, just the creatures that are in competition for my food.” He nodded. He understood that all too well. For a mythological creature, the mermaid was very rational and logical.  
Curtis looked around at the bodies strewn over the walkway, in varied stages of decay. There was no sign of struggle though. “How did you…?”  
“How did I what? Kill them?”  
“Yes.” The mermaid lay on her back, staring up at the metal roof. She missed the stars that once twinkled in the night sky above her, or the puffy white clouds that trailed lazily across the sunlight sky.  
“I sang to them.” So she wasn’t just a mermaid…she was a siren. “Would you like me to sing for you?”  
Curtis swallowed. “Maybe later. How did you get here?”  
She shrugged. “I do not know. I fell asleep in my cave and when I woke up, I was here. Where is here?”  
“You’re aboard Snowpiercer.”  
“What is that?”  
“A high speed train.”  
“And what is that?”  
“Do you know what happened to the world?”  
“Cold…”  
“Yes.”  
“It got too cold and I was forced to go deeper than I usually do to hunt. But my cave was deep enough that I could return there to sleep.” She rolled over onto her belly, making the suspended metal sway. “What am I doing here?”  
“Theoretically, we’re to repopulate the world when it begins to thaw.”  
“If there is only me, then how am I to repopulate the oceans?”  
Curtis swallowed. “I don’t know. Do you lay eggs? Maybe there’s a male out there waiting for the thaw.”  
“But…how am I to get to him? If I am here?” She had a point.  
“Ah! Well done! You’ve found the menace.” Curtis whirled around and the siren looked up. “What a surprise! I didn’t know we had a mermaid aboard. Wilford will be pleased to hear!”  
“Mason-“  
“You’ve done your job. You may return to the tail section.” One of the guards grabbed for him but the siren wasn’t pleased with this. She lunged forward and pulled the man’s legs out from under him and dragged him into the water. His surprised shout became garbled with water then blood clouded the water. “Kill her. We’ll put her on display.”  
“You can’t! She could be the last of her kind.”  
“Then she’ll die anyway.”  
The siren launched out of the water, landing on the walkway and making the section Curtis stood on collapse. He gasped at the rush of water over his bare legs. He had the smarts to snatch the knife before he fell into the water. He grabbed onto the metal grating as she slithered up the incline it made.  
She began to sing. The most beautiful song anyone on that walkway had ever heard. The guns clattered to the metal. Mason, unaffected by the song despite its beauty, began to back slowly toward the door. The siren struck as quick as a viper. Some she used her teeth on, others she simply drowned. Curtis watched in awe and terror then it was over.  
“Would you like me to sing to you?”  
“Are you going to kill me too?”  
She smiled, that frighteningly beautiful mouth full of teeth. She shook her head then began to sing. Her touch was soft yet cool and he tasted copper when their lips met. Their arms wound around each other as they began to sink beneath the water. Sound muffled, her song now silent when the water closed over his head. He had a moment of panic before her eyes soothed him.

Edgar looked up as the door opened. A pair of guards dragged Curtis’s unconscious body past the line and dropped him. Several tail-sectioners hurried forward to check him. He was alive but out cold. They carried him to his bunk. Edgar sat next to him until he finally regained consciousness.  
“What happened?”  
Curtis remember the touch of her lips and hands, the caress of her tail fins over his bare legs in the water, the warmth of her body wrapped around his as they cried out their pleasure within her cave. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” He smiled a soft, secretive smile. Repopulate, she had said…


End file.
